Icon Drabble #2

ch1pper made me this icon! And she wanted angsty John, but then she mentioned detox and this happened instead, less with the angsty and more with the physically ill and emotionally uncomfortable...

~*~

Porcelain Skin


He knew from earth that it would be difficult, that his body had become accustomed

addicted

to the hit.

If Granny hadn't slipped an extra in her pocket, he would have been this bad, or worse, in front of his family. In front of his dad, his baby sister.

Instead it's Aeryn who watches him, arms crossed and forehead crumpled, mouth emotionless as she holds up the doorway. He curls away from the waste funnel, arms shaking as he braces against the warm floor.

"Know what the worst part is?" Besides Aeryn watching him detox with that careful expression, calculating the differentials between empathy and hurt.

Her voice isn't unsympathetic, even though she hasn't touched him since the cold turkey set in with a vengeance. "That you did this to yourself?"

He doesn't shake his head, doesn't goad the vertigo, just squeezes his eyes shut and hunches back on his knees, spine collapsed around the vibrating clench of his belly. "The floor is warm. Sick as a dog and not a cold tile in the place."

"Cold floors." She pushes off from the doorway and takes a step closer.

"You rest your forehead on the cold floor. Helps."

"Cold." He watches her arms unfold, her hands careful as she unholsters her weapon and turns it as if to pistol whip him in slow mo. "Against the forehead?"

He risks a single nod, and then the flat of the grip is cool against his head, the chill of the chakkan oil inside bleeding off some of the sick heat of his brain. Eyes closed, his hands involuntarily cup the grip and shift her cool fingers against his skin. Her other hand strokes through his damp hair, tentative, and he swallows against the rising tremor.

~*~